Three Simple Steps for a Beautiful At Home Office

Here at Move we’re a bit obsessed with home offices, so we jumped at the chance to showcase Kelly Oxford’s new digs, designed by the oh-so-talented Orlando Soria. Orlando just took over as creative director of the LA branch of Homepolish. Homepolish is an amazing and affordable service for busy women who want a bit of chic in their home, but don’t want to pay an arm and a leg for it. For $50 you get a top-notch designer to come your home and give you a design assessment. From there, you can do all the shopping yourself, or hire the designers by the hour to help you with the decorating pieces you find most challenging. Packages start at just $500 and guarantee you will have a gorgeous place to call your own at the end. Orlando took writer Kelly Oxford’s office to a whole new level of style, so we asked him to share three tips so you can up your game in your own home office, too.

1. What would you say are the three most important elements to creating a beautiful home office? Color, texture, and personality. You need color because it helps the space feel lively and sparks your imagination. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s totally true. When I say texture that just means don’t choose a ton of furnishings that are all the same finish. One of the reasons Kelly’s office looks inviting is that we combined wood, ceramics, plush carpeting, linen upholstery, and knit throws to create visual interest and give the space a natural collected look. Adding personality to a space can be done by finding pieces of art you love, adding photos of your family, or showcasing some of your favorite flea market finds. Kelly’s humor really comes through in the things she keeps around her, from her Mary Poppins poster to the needlepoint a fan sent her.

2. We LOVE the color on Kelly’s office walls and know that paint is one of the quickest, easiest and least expensive updates to totally change the look of a room. How do you go about choosing paint for an office? Are there colors you specifically would gravitate towards or stay away from? Can you recommend three of your favorite paint colors/brands for office walls?
Usually when I’m choosing a paint color, I’ll get sample cans of 3-4 colors I like and paint them on the wall in a few different places to see what they look like in the space, how they reflect that specific light. This is important because different paints will pick up different hues in different lighting situations. It sucks when you paint a room a color you loved on your fan deck and then you realize it looks too red, yellow, or blue in the space.
As far as specific recommendations go, it really depends on the space. For a retro California pool look, I love the color Kelly and I chose for her space (Benjamin Moore Antigua Aqua #610). For a dark, sexy office, I love Farrow & Ball Hague Blue (No. 30). For a crazy, Royal Tenenbaums look, I love Benjamin Moore Florida Pink (#1320). These are all colors for people who want to make a big statement with their wall colors. In general, I’m more a fan of bringing in color in accessories and art. That being said, a great go-to color that goes with everything and literally works in every space, is Benjamin Moore Half Moon Crest (#1481).

3. We’re a little bit obsessed with the art wall in Kelly’s office! For girls looking to create something similar, how would they start to curate a collection of their own?
The art in Kelly’s office is a combination of pieces she had, stuff I found at the flea market, and new stuff we bought together. The important thing to remember when creating a gallery wall is to make it intentional. Thus, if you want it to be clean and sleek, make sure all the frames are the same size and shape and color and that the art is consistent. If you want the collected look of Kelly’s, make sure you have a variety of frames and colors, mixing in new pieces with the vintage. If there’s too much vintage, it can have the feeling of looking like a thrift store so it’s good to pop in a few fresh new pieces. It’s also important to make sure you have a variety of sizes: large anchor pieces, medium size pieces, and small pieces to fill in gaps. For girls looking to start their own galley wall of unique vintage art, just do what I do. I stop at Goodwill almost every time I pass it to see if there are any art treasures in there. I frame large-format postcards I get from gallery openings. And I frame ugly/random/funny drawings my friends make. The key is that these artworks be varied and different from one another and that they all speak to you somehow. If you follow your innate taste, your gallery wall will tell a little story about who you are.

Do you have an in-home office? How did you decorate to make your space feel more personal and fun? Share with us in the comments below!